AUTHOR’S NOTE: Since the beginning of the 1970s when I first encountered the Hermetic Qabalah and its offshoot, the occult tarot, I’ve known that the high-water-mark of achievement with the latter is considered to be the hand-drawn creation of a personal deck. The goal is to embark on a metaphysical odyssey by getting inside one’s head and furnishing it with unique appointments of uncommon wisdom that vibrate on a private frequency. Doing so will ideally imprint the symbols indelibly in the memory.

As a student of graphic design at Parsons in New York City in the mid-60s, I certainly possess the skill to do so, and as a retiree I have nothing but time (although at my age who can say). What I lack is a compelling reason. At this juncture in my long-and-winding tarot journey I’m mainly interested in prognostication of the action-and-event-oriented kind (call it fortune-telling if you like, I don’t mind), and mass-market decks are adequate for that. As far as psychological self-discovery, I can say with conviction that I’ve “been there and done that” to the n^th degree because back in the late 20^th Century (at least for the self-initiated practitioner living in non-internet isolation), working diligently on one’s own psyche was the best – and sometimes the only – way to master esoteric principles despite more recent opinions to the contrary. (You must never read for yourself, don’cha know?) Then there was always natal astrology (supplemented by predictive methods), which is a much more effective tool for the purpose anyway.

My lifelong companion on this quest has been the Thoth deck created by Aleister Crowley and Frieda Harris. As an artist and occultist I have no hope of equaling their monumental accomplishment and, quite frankly, as a well-adjusted senior resident of the spiritual realm of Esoterica, I don’t think it’s necessary to try. For me the portal to sublimation of life’s mundane pulse has always been the Tree of Life, and tarot is just “along for the ride.” Besides, if I want mind-expanding tarot moments I can always compare the Thoth cards to other examples of excellence like M.M. Meleen’s Tabula Mundi Colores Arcus; Thoth’s close cousin, Liber T: Tarot Star’s Eternal; or Pat Zalewski’s precisely-plotted Magical Tarot of the Golden Dawn, then go back and re-read the Book of Thoth yet again (even though I still dip into it almost daily for reference).

My main approach to acquiring universal comprehension from an inner perspective has been practice and contemplation rather than structured psychoanalytical rigor, and those who are interested can see how well that has worked out for me by exploring any of my more profound (and, it must be said, curmudgeonly) essays on this blog. Lon Milo DuQuette believes that creating your own deck will “change your life forever;” I don’t doubt it (out, damn ink-spots!) but I will counter that my own metaphysical bandwidth has already been stretched to an extent that will serve me just fine until the day I tango up to the “final frontier” with the Thoth’s dancing-partner, the “not-so-Grim” Reaper. Until that dramatic “manifestation of the Terpsichorean muse” (to quote Monty Python’s John Cleese), I will just read the cards for insight and inspiration and let the navel-gazing go.

Because the underlying philosophy is so deeply embedded in my consciousness, any deck will do for this, although it’s undeniable that I made the Thoth my own long ago and have since seasoned Crowley’s recondite repast with my decades of study, practical experience and the ideas of less-singular but still worthy authors. At this point, it’s “all of a piece” and there is nothing I need that can only be supplied by a deck of my own making. That said, if there was no Thoth, TdM or RWS and all I had available to me was the 90% of recent self-published decks that are pure garbage, I would hie me to a desert island and create my own. Either that or take up a different pursuit.